ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Celebrating Cable Street
LYNNE WALSH interviews writer Alex Kanefsky and designer Yoav Segal about their new musical, Cable Street
VETERAN ANTI-FASCIST: (Left) Ubby Cowan, veteran of the battle of Cable Street and inspiration for the designs of his grandson, (Right) Yoav Segal
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
THE Battle of Cable Street resonates as a vital moment in radical history, with the stories of those who fought there living on for future generations. The 1936 clash, between working-class people of London’s East End and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, has attracted much attention from musicians and actors.
From the mid-1980s, when folk-punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang gave us the anthemic The Ghosts of Cable Street, through to folkies The Young ‘Uns creating a new song, Cable Street, as part of their show about the anti-fascist Johnny Longstaff. A few years ago, the inimitable Stephen Berkoff staged his verse play, They Shall Not Pass, and this year sees the continued run of The Merchant of Venice 1936, transposed to the East End, and Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock, as fascists threaten the community.
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